villagelogs | 030-035 » a-hunting they will go

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030-035 » a-hunting they will go

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central Mathias.
WHEN: Days 030-035
WHAT: Unexpected changes come to Mathias, followed by a Hunt.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here! And shiny new CR meme too.

RECOMMENDED ♫ Marco Beltrami "It Hears You"

DAYS 030-032
A CHANGE IN CIRCUMSTANCES
The day after the earthquake dawns like any other in Mathias Township. The sky is a light winter grey, clouds obscuring even a hint of true sunlight, and snow falls off and on in dustings that rest atop the piles left from the storm a few days past. The air is bitterly cold, a gentle wind feeling like ice in the sub-freezing temperatures, and residents should be grateful that the earthquake didn't do more damage than just breaking a few household objects.

It seems like business as usual. It will not be until the second day that residents will begin to notice the difference.

The General Store's shelves have not been restocked. Items in kitchens have not replenished in the passing night. Food from the previous day has aged as normal, and as the days continue to pass, things will begin to grow stale or become moldy as they would in the outside world. Two days pass, three, four... Still, the food does not return.

Perhaps rationing should be considered.

NEW ARRIVALS
The newest arrivals to Mathias will wake on the snowy beach near the Grey Gull restaurant. They should probably hurry inside and get warmed up before hypothermia sets in or something finds them out in the cold...

DAYS 033-034
IN THE NIGHT, IN THE DARK
These days, too, seem to be simply more of the same. The days are cold and grey, the food does not replenish, and they continue to be trapped in this eerie town. But when night falls, the story changes.

An hour after sunset, it begins. Scratching sounds at walls, like something searching for a way inside. The ominous feeling of something out there in the darkness, moving through the town, stalking through the night. The inability to find any sign of something being there at all. It's enough to make anyone feel like they're going mad. To happen just one night, it could be a fluke, a trick of the mind as so many things here seem to be. But to happen a second night, with more intensity... There is something there, or they are going mad.

It's hard to know which to hope for.

DAY 035
THE HUNT
This day is not like the others. There is something in the air, a dreadful anticipation that rises inside them all as the hours pass. Every moment that brings them closer to nightfall brings it closer too — if only they knew what it was.

An hour after sunset, the Hunt begins.

Those who are outside at this time are gripped by such terror that they can do nothing but run and be chased. They are prey and the predators that stalk them with steadfast determination are creatures never meant to be seen by mortal eyes. All lights outside go out, from streetlamps to flashlights, and the world descends into deeper darkness, only the clouded moonlight and curtained glow from illuminated houses lighting their way as they flee.

Those who are inside at this time are trapped in their safe havens. No doors or windows can be opened from within, nothing can be broken or forced, and they can do nothing but wait and listen while their friends and neighbors are pursued by creatures whose very presence they can feel in their bones and whose growls echo in the night, entwined with the screams of their victims.

In the thick darkness, these creatures appear little more than shadows, large and looming, deadly and unknown, but in rare glimpses in scattered pieces of light, the Hunted are met with a sight they cannot comprehend and will never be able to properly describe or fully remember, for these creatures cannot be fathomed within the limits of the human mind.

The Hunt lasts for one hour exactly and then the creatures vanish into the darkness, leaving only fear and death in their wake.

ABOUT THE HUNT
— Players may choose to have their resident be one of the Hunted or a Witness to the Hunt. None are exempt from the the Hunt and all will be affected by it in some way.

— Those who are hunted must flee the creatures or they will die. The Hunted may move throughout the town at any speed, for the creatures may choose to move both quickly or slowly, but the creatures will always inevitably find them. The only escape is to seek shelter — the creatures will not enter a building where living people are, but they will follow the Hunted into buildings where there are no other living people.

— Those who are trapped within buildings at the start of the Hunt are unable to open doors and windows from within, but the Hunted may open them from outside in order to take shelter in these safe havens.

— Those who are hunted are unable to fight back against the creatures until the moments just before their death. This is due the creatures only having physical form in these final moments, rendering any attacks against them useless, whether they be physical, magical, or psychic in nature. Attempts may be made in those moments before death, but by then it is too late — the prey has been caught.

— When one of the Hunted is caught, there is no escaping, there is only screaming in madness as death falls painfully upon them. No one can come to their aid and their body will be found afterward, the bloody remains ripped and torn apart by something that cannot be identified. Large sprays and pools of blood stain the area around the corpse, turning the snow sickening shade of crimson that darkens as the hours pass.

— After the creatures have vanished, there are no signs of them to be found in the snow. There are no tracks or marks of any kind save for the carnage of the fresh kill.

— Those who have been sacrificed to the Hunt will revive two days later on Day 037. The conditions in which they revive will be detailed later, but there will be only minor lasting physical damage from the Hunt.

— The Hunted will lose 5 points of sanity. Those Witnesses who find the corpses will lose 2 points of sanity, or 3 points if they are not unaccustomed to this type of sight. Others who are merely Witnesses to the sounds of Hunt may choose to lose 1 point of sanity as a result of the experience.

CONDITIONS UPDATE
— THE WEATHER is fairly typical of a northern winter. The sky is almost always grey, the temperature is below freezing during the day (and colder at night), and a light snow falls intermittently. The sun sets early in the evening. Residents should bundle up when going outside and not venture too far into the dark night...

— THE FOG remains blocking the paths in the forest beginning a few dozen yards past the treeline, urging residents to stay huddled within the town proper, and it also now blocks the northern section of town, beginning just past Hill Lane, before where residents know the chasm in the earth to be between Hill and Stine Road. Venturing into the fog is ill-advised.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue. Sherlock Holmes is still missing, and Phil Coulson, John Constantine, Zed Martin, and Helen Magnus have vanished as well.

OOC NOTES
— FOOD will be restocked in some fashion in the next full log, don't worry. We aren't going full survival mode yet.

— DAY 036 The next log will cover Day 36 only and will include the locations of deaths and any corpse burials that occur the night of Day 35 or are planned for Day 36. (There will be prompts included for both the "living" and the "dead" in this single day log.) Please submit all information by Wednesday, Feb 17.

— MOD STATUS It's mostly just Amy steering this ship for now, so things will probably be pretty slow for a while. Apologies in advance, and please don't feel shy about pinging me if you're stuck waiting for something.

navigation | faq | setting | mod contact

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Neal winced. "I didn't. Alex got taken in for breaking and entering."

He went quiet for a moment. "Except for the part with the royal family, that job actually went pretty far south pretty fast."

"DNA match?" Malcolm guessed.

"Yeah. She wasn't in long, though. Alex is nothing if not well-connected."

He smiled, a little sadly, the expression fading after a moment. "I wonder what she's up to."

"I wonder that kind of thing too, sometimes," Malcolm said. "I thought I would think about it less as time went on but..." His voice trailed off. "I wonder if I killed my father."

Neal had to take a moment to make sure he heard Malcolm right. "You wonder... Why? What happened?"

He doesn't doubt for a moment that if Malcolm hurt someone, he was forced to it. He doesn't doubt that for a breath. Still, that's one hell of a bombshell.

"This guy kidnapped a woman and was blackmailing my mother to stab my father in the heart or he'd kill the hostage, but... I couldn't let my mother do that."

A beat.

"So I did it."

He looked down at Neal. "When I was in college, I'd heard this story about a serial killer who stabbed a sheriff's deputy in the heart and the deputy survived. He was a heart surgeon before he was arrested for murder. He told me how it was possible. So I thought maybe I could do it without killing him and then smoke the killer out. He sort of... directed the stab but... he did tell me back in the day that it was like threading the eye of a needle. When I was brought here, he hadn't woken up yet."

Neal took all that in silently, trying to get his head around it, all the different levels of fucked up. Could he have done it, in Malcolm's place? If it had been Elizabeth and Peter? No. He knew he couldn't. He couldn't even if it was his own mother and a father he barely remembered. The thought of sinking a weapon into someone else's body with calculation--not with passion, or desperation, but caution and deliberation--made him feel sick.

He wondered if it felt like shoving a carving knife into thick clay, and mentally recoiled from the thought.

"You're a stronger person than I am," Neal said finally. Everyone here was.

“I don’t know if it’s strength,” Malcolm told him. “I didn’t feel like there was a choice. My mother was determined to take the blame for it, but I’d planned to confess what really happened in the morning. Except - in the morning - I woke up here.”

Neal made a soft, ironically amused noise. “It’s strength. I think you’re the only person in this house who doesn’t see it.”

Malcolm looked at him curiously.

“What do you mean?”

The cowboys literally felt compelled to look after him.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so in love with people before. You care, all the time, with an abandon most of us can only stand to give one or two close friends.” He shifted on the bed, trying to get comfortable. It was impossible to forget what Daisy said when he spoke to her at the boarding house. “You worry so much about being weak, but you’re a big part of what glues us all together. You act like it doesn’t take strength to be the kind of person you are in the face of everything that happens to you, and you’re wrong. It takes the most important kind their is. It’s the kind that makes everyone around it want to be better, just to keep up.”

He rubbed his eyes, smiling faintly. “To paraphrase, your willingness to wrestle your demons makes your angels sing.”

He fell silent for a moment, rolling that around in his head.

“...I feel like an invalid sometimes,” he admitted quietly. “I just want to contribute something. So I give what I can.”

“You give a lot, Malcolm.” He shrugged with one shoulder. “None of us are here out of pity.”

He smiles at nothing, not meeting Malcolm’s eyes. “If Doc’s the heart of this house, you’re the soul.”

“I’m going to try not to think about what that makes the rest of you,” he teased. “But don’t ever let Raylan convince you he’s not a brain.”

"I think he would probably try to argue he's the liver, without recognizing its importance in the whole." Neal gestured at the air. "Biological ecosystem."

“You mean his role is filtering out dangerous things before they get to us? He might have a point,” Malcolm conceded. “Though, speaking of toxins, I hope the fact that neither of them has to quit to come in here tonight doesn’t mean alcohol poisoning,” he mused. A beat. “It’s possible my problems have been saving them from themselves.”

Neal laughed, though not loudly. He didn't want to bother the cowboys either, but it was also something else. This, whispering with Malcolm after dark, practically gossiping about their housemates--it all felt weirdly safe. Comforting. Childishly familiar.

He rolled onto his back and crossed his arms behind his head. "They'll be all right. I get the feeling their insides have seen worse punishments than terrible moonshine." Neal smiled a little, the expression cockeyed. "I... It's stupid, maybe, but it was reassuring when I found out people here were making booze. Not because I wanted to drink, either, it's just... It was a relief to know that even here, people were being people."

"I never looked at it that way. When I got here and Raylan was salvaging pipes for making a still... I thought it was a weird thing to prioritize." A beat. "And then I was off my meds and.... I don't know. It seemed less crazy."

Neal makes a softly amused noise. "Civilization begins with distillation, and all that."

Malcolm huffed a laugh.

"Something like that," he conceded.

Neal goes quiet, debating whether or not to say what he does next. It feels...

He's not sure. Like a plea for attention, almost. Childish. But he got so used to New York, so used to his apartment, June, Mozzie. Peter. Elizabeth. The unit. Even caged to a two mile radius on his off days, it was home. It was his. He fit in that world. Here...

"I'm not sure how I fit," he says softly. "I still feel a little like a houseguest sometimes."

Not like it had even been that long. What, a week and a half? It had taken more than a year to build the home he had in New York. It wasn't fair to expect that kind of integration already. But it had been a long time since he'd been an outsider.

An odd thing to realize.

“We don’t see you as a houseguest,” Malcolm told him. “And we really can’t, can we, if you’re taking a night shift,” he pointed out. “Not just anyone gets entrusted by the cowboys to guard the banshee in the bell tower,” he joked.

Neal smiled, glancing away rather than looking at Malcolm. "Fair."

He lets the silence stretch for a little while, almost lets it taper off into the possibility of sleep, but--

"I just. Miss home."

"I miss some things from home," Malcolm admitted. Gil, his family, the team. The ready availability of a pharmacy. "But some things have been better for me here, which is probably kind of sad." He peeked over the edge of the bed. "Are you happy back home?"

"I am," he said softly. He looked at Malcolm this time, meeting his eyes instead of looking away. "It was a weird... thing to realize. That I like where I am. That I didn't want to leave. That I wanted..."

He shook his head, not noticing the way he keeps shifting between past and present tense. "I haven't had someplace I thought of as home for a very long time," is what he finally says. Quickly, almost too quickly, he asks, "What don't you miss?"

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